2012-01-23 – Cameron’s announcement of a referendum

Today David Cameron pledged to give the British public ‘their say’ on our membership of the European Union. It was promised that it would be held before 2018.

Excellent! I hear you say. Well, if you are a Eurosceptic. No, if you are a Europhile. What?! I hear you say. If we think back to 2007, Cameron made a cast-iron guarantee. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Will this new promise materialise? Probably not. So the Europhiles might as well be out celebrating.

This promise is bound to the Tories winning outright in 2015. That doesn’t look too likely.

I imagine the speech today was through gritted teeth. Cameron has tried to stay quiet on the issue of Europe for a long, long time. With the economy in tatters and particularly the Eurozone in despair, the people of Britain are becoming ever more vocal. As UKIP begin to rise in popularity, this announcement is most probably only a way to keep Eurospectic voters on board.